In recent history, computers have become much more pervasive in society. In addition, they have become more powerful, faster and have significantly more storage than they did just a few short years ago. These exponential increases in speed, storage and processor power have provided the necessary infrastructure for computers to network together effectively.
The most publicized computer network in existence is referred to as the Internet. The Internet is a connection of computers using the TCP/IP protocol. This has evolved into what is now referred to as the world wide web which provides a somewhat cognitive interface into the Internet. The world wide web allows users to access information by indicating the location of the information which they desire to retrieve or by traversing hyper-text links which cross-reference information in many different locations. This is made possible by the implementation of a universal resource locator (url) as a way of locating information on the world wide web.
Many products have been developed which assist the user in searching the web for information. Access to the world wide web can be accomplished very inexpensively using a phone line, an inexpensive computer and a software program called a web browser such as Netscape's Navigator or IBM's Web Explorer. This ability to inexpensively connect into the world wide web has encouraged its use for much more than business purposes. The world wide web is used for educational research, shopping, games, making reservations, trading stock and numerous other purposes. Children, as well as adults, are frequent users of the world wide web.
While it was the advent of two dimensional graphically intense web sites that spurred the popularity of the Internet, the next level of technology may bring Internets, internal networks such as intranets, and networks in general to a new level. The intent of this phase of Internet development has been to render web sites sensually. That is, a user interacts with or exists within a site and experiences and perceives the site from within. This is referred to as Virtual Reality and is intended to perceptualize the network or to have the network rendered to humans with more of their senses. It puts the user in the center of the Internet.
While Virtual Reality is still in its infancy, it traditionally uses computer simulations containing three-dimensional (3D)graphics and devices to allow the user to interact with the simulation. Much of what the user has been able to browse as "data" on the web may be able to be `experienced` as a 3D web site in the future. 3D web sites are constructed with a Virtual Reality Modeling Language, herein referred to as VRML, which allows for the design and implementation of platform-independent scene descriptions. VRML is a file format for describing interactive 3D objects and worlds to be experienced on the world wide web utilizing http (A HyperText Transfer Protocol used on the Internet) in its implementation.
VRML allows an individual to construct three dimensional, viewable, representations of objects. These objects can then be placed on a web site, and viewed on the world wide web, by any user that has a VRML enabled browser installed on the user's computer. These objects can be any object the VRML author can imagine, such as: telephones, houses, cityscapes, or three dimensional representations of data, or even animals or human characters. Initially these objects were inanimate, but enhancements to VRML have been made to allow for animation of objects existing in a world, in addition to allowing for sensors to be used to trigger preprogrammed responses from the objects with which they interact. Still objects have not been able to independently act with the user.
In an effort to `place the user into the center of the Internet`, the concept of an intelligent virtual object, called an avatar, has come into being. An avatar is a representation of the user which is embodied as a character so that the user can traverse the web as a representative being. The avatar can be considered a proxy of the user, conducting business on the web for the user. Avatars can also contain computer programs to implement additional functions that the avatar perform. The avatar will appear to go from location to location, allowing the user to perceive, with the senses of sight and sound, the surroundings in the world in which the avatar is traversing. While this has been an extremely significant step in the development of traversing the world wide web, it is still only based on the concept of one person searching for and locating information using an avatar as the representation of the user.